More Than a Little Help from My Friends

Online peer support communities such as the Microsoft newsgroups and SQL Server Magazine forums are invaluable resources. Like many of you, I contribute to and learn from these communities every day. Peer support is a great option and can meet your support needs much of the time, especially when your problem isn't a down mission-critical server.

But peer support isn't always the best option. You can't expect your peers online to solve all your problems, especially in emergency situations that require an immediate response. You also shouldn't rely on peer support to solve your problems when a misstep might cause irretrievable loss of your data. Nevertheless, I see a surprising number of messages posted to the SQL Server newsgroups that look like this:

Subject: Help!!!! Message: I've done a terrible thing to my production database, and I'm not sure how to fix the problem. The database is completely inaccessible, and I'm afraid that the data may be lost. My boss is furious. Please respond ASAP with a fix for my problem.

Of course, I've exaggerated the situation a bit to demonstrate my point. But such messages often come from SQL Server newcomers—the folks least likely to be able to solve the problem on their own.

Although peer support can provide great information, the answers you get don't always appear right away. After all, the people on the other end are simply volunteering their time—they have jobs and other responsibilities just like you do. Sometimes, you get what you pay for. Personally, I wouldn't rely on a newsgroup posting if crucial corporate data was at risk, time was of the essence, or my job might depend on solving the problem. Instead, I might use one of Microsoft's paid product-support options. Some people who are new to SQL Server might not know that these mechanisms exist, and often these newcomers are most in need of a fee-based helping hand when their data is at risk. Sometimes, paying a small fee can save the day—and your database.

I can't possibly cover the myriad ways to get paid support from Microsoft. The company provides different kinds of support depending on your licensing agreement and other relationships you might have with our friends in Redmond. Microsoft has posted a list of support options at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;EN-US;offerprophone&sd=msdn . And you can always buy a single, per-incident phone call for $245 by using one of the following numbers:

Discuss this Article 2

Mark (not verified)

on Nov 26, 2002

Dear Brian,
I totally agree with you that any tips coming from a public usergroup have to be used very carefully. Sometimes they just wrong and can make the situation even worse. But I must also say that MS PSS isn't always the best source, especially if you need a quick solution. In my experience you first get some generalist which just tells you to install all the latest patches (or upgrade from 7.0 to 2000) and it takes usually at least a couple of days before you get into contact with the real experts.
One thing I would always advice, before trying the usergroups or PSS, check BOL and Technet for any known problems. It's free and immediately available.
Markus Bohse
MCT,MCDBA,MCSE
Quest-Consultants BV

Not such a big exageration. I got a deperate phone call from a former co-worker who had deleted all the administrator accounts on his production server, and disabled the local machine administrator access. This is the same person who thought to drop tables from a database by deleting their records from sysobjects.

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